March 18, 2024 — In a statement Friday, the Pebble Partnership alleged the EPA’s veto was issued before the completion of the permitting process.
Rather than waiting for the Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) permitting process to conclude, the EPA made its decision under a provision of the Clean Water Act that allows it to restrict mining activity in the Bristol Bay watershed.
The bay contains the world’s single largest sockeye salmon fishery.
January 11, 2023 — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge by the State of Alaska to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s block of the Pebble Mine project.
The state sought to go directly to the high court and overturn the EPA’s January 2023 decision to veto the mine project based on the federal Clean Water Act and the danger of open-pit mining damaging the Bristol Bay watershed and its salmon fishery.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy in July filed the lawsuit, arguing that the agency decision against the mine and its effect on Alaska economic development warranted an immediate top judicial review.
January 9, 2024 — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Alaska’s bid to revive a proposed copper and gold mine that was blocked by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The justices did not comment in turning away the state’s attempt to sue the Biden administration directly in the high court over its desire to revive the proposed Pebble Mine in the state’s Bristol Bay region.
November 16, 2023 — The company trying to build a huge copper and gold mine in the salmon-rich Bristol Bay will keep fighting for the project, despite a decision by the federal government to keep the proposed development site off-limits to large-scale metals mining.
John Shively, chief executive officer of the Pebble Limited Partnership, made that vow in a presentation at the Alaska Miners Association annual convention in Anchorage.
He said the Pebble mine had the potential to transform the economy and improve lives in the rural Bristol Bay region, just as he said the Red Dog Mine, one of the world’s biggest zinc producers, has done in Northwest Alaska.
“That’s why we’re still fighting this. The resources are there. We’re still here. We’re not going anywhere,” he told the convention audience in his presentation on Thursday.
The company’s fight is backed by the administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy. At his direction, the state in July filed a lawsuit directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to overturn a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency that bars permitting for any Pebble-type mine in key areas of the Bristol Bay watershed.
Dunleavy, in brief remarks earlier this week at the miners’ convention, expressed pride in his support of the controversial project.
“I was told if I supported Pebble, I would never win another election. Well, I don’t know. I’m here. I’m still here,” he said on Tuesday, drawing applause from the audience. The Republican governor was handily reelected last November.
The EPA decision invoked a rarely used provision in the Clean Water Act to preclude any wetlands permit for the project. The agency determined that the Pebble mine posed an unacceptable risk to the Bristol Bay watershed, essential to a region with the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs and with major fisheries and wildlife populations that depend on that salmon.
To help reverse that decision, the Pebble Limited Partnership and its owner, Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., in September filed an amicus brief in support of the state’s Supreme Court effort. Filing supportive briefs, too, were the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and numerous Alaska and national resource-development groups.
August 30, 2023 — The nation’s top environmental official said he fully supports his agency’s decision to block a proposed gold and copper mine in Alaska’s salmon-rich Bristol Bay, even as the state of Alaska has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that action.
“Let me be clear, we are very proud of our decision to really evaluate the Pebble Mine project and do what is necessary to protect Bristol Bay,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday as he began a four-day tour of Alaska, starting in a Bristol Bay village.
The EPA in January vetoed the proposed Pebble Mine, citing concerns with possible impacts on the aquatic ecosystem in southwest Alaska that supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. The region also has significant mineral resources.
July 27, 2023 — The state of Alaska is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the proposed Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay.
The state attorney general, with the help of a private law firm on contract, on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to repeal a January decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that in essence vetoed the mine.
Pebble would be a massive open-pit copper and gold mine on state land. The deposit is located upstream from Bristol Bay, Alaska’s most productive sockeye salmon fishery. The company hoping to develop it, Pebble Limited Partnership, says their mine design would ensure contaminants don’t degrade the fishery.
June 13, 2023 — A group of shareholders and the developer of the proposed Pebble mine in Southwest Alaska have reached a $6.4 million settlement to resolve investors’ complaints that they had been misled by the company.
The investors had claimed in federal court that they were harmed when the stock price of Northern Dynasty Minerals collapsed following several blows to the project in 2020, including the release of secretly recorded video calls of Pebble executives discussing the project. They asserted that the company and executives made misleading statements about Pebble before a federal agency denied a permit for the project that year.
The Pebble copper and gold prospect is located in the Bristol Bay region, on state land about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. An array of tribal, fishing and conservation groups have long opposed the mine, arguing it will destroy the valuable wild salmon fishery in the region. Northern Dynasty, which has worked to develop Pebble for two decades, has said it can safely be built.
May 14, 2023 — President Joe Biden celebrated his conservation achievements Thursday with a Rose Garden address. The No. 1 item on his list? Blocking the Pebble mine, a proposed open-pit gold and copper mine upstream from the sockeye-rich waters of Bristol Bay.
“Bristol Bay is an extraordinary place, unlike anywhere in the world,” the president said. “Six rivers meet there, traveling through 40,000 miles of tundra, wetlands and lakes, collecting freshwater and salmon along the way … making this the largest sockeye salmon fishery on all the earth.”
Biden announced no new developments in the ongoing Pebble saga. His speech cited scores of sanctuaries and safeguards his administration created, from the mountains of Nevada to the Pacific Ocean. But the primacy he gave to this one part of Southwest Alaska shows how committed Biden is to stopping Pebble, and how he sees it as a centerpiece of his environmental record.
United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director Alannah Hurley was invited to Washington, D.C., to introduce the president. In a blue print kuspuk, she spoke of how her salmon-centered community has lived with a threat looming over them for 20 years.
May 7, 2023 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will reconsider certain aspects of the Pebble company’s permit application to build a large gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The 81-page report comes just three months after the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the mine in a separate process.
“It’s a bit surprising and a bit confusing,” said Dennis McLerran, who worked as the regional EPA administrator during the Obama administration.
The EPA in January determined that the mine would have “unacceptable adverse effects on salmon fishery areas.” Using its powers under the Clean Water Act, it essentially vetoed the mine plan, and any future plan that would have a similar impact on the same waterways. Many opponents of the project hailed that as the final blow.
McLerran said the EPA decision nullifies any permit the Army Corps could issue.
May 1, 2023 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will reconsider certain aspects of the Pebble company’s permit application to build a large gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The 81-page report comes just three months after the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the mine in a separate process.
“It’s a bit surprising and a bit confusing,” said Dennis McLerran, who worked as the regional EPA administrator during the Obama administration.
The EPA in January determined that the mine would have “unacceptable adverse effects on salmon fishery areas.” Using its powers under the Clean Water Act, it essentially vetoed the mine plan, and any future plan that would have a similar impact on the same waterways. Many opponents of the project hailed that as the final blow.
McLerran said the EPA decision nullifies any permit the Army Corps could issue.